Smartbird CEO has $100M and a plan, but zero employees

Key Takeaways

• Allbirds sold its shoe business for $43 million and raised $100 million to become AI infrastructure company Smartbird
• New CEO Nadia Carlsten, a former AWS exec, starts with zero employees and no office
• Smartbird will target enterprises wanting direct control over AI servers, not compete with hyperscalers on price

Allbirds completed its transformation from sustainable shoe company to AI infrastructure startup yesterday. The company, now called Smartbird, sold its footwear business for $43 million, raised another $100 million from public markets, and hired former AWS executive Nadia Carlsten as CEO. Her first day on the job came with an unusual constraint: no employees, no office, no existing team.

"We're going to be recruiting a brand-new team for the AI business, and we're going to be getting an office," Carlsten told TechCrunch from Amsterdam. "The shoe business has officially closed as of yesterday, so that's all done."

It's a startup with a sole founder and a very large seed round. Carlsten holds an engineering PhD and most recently ran DCAI, a European compute company. She'll earn $700,000 annually and received stock worth about $9 million to take the role.

What is Smartbird actually building?

Smartbird aims to be an AI infrastructure provider, but not in the way you might expect. The company won't compete with hyperscalers like AWS, Google Cloud, or Azure. It won't try to undercut neoclouds that arbitrage GPU prices against inference tokens. Instead, Carlsten is targeting a specific customer profile: enterprises that need direct control over the servers running their models.

These customers typically have political or business-model reasons to avoid the public cloud. They value data sovereignty over scalability. At DCAI, Carlsten worked with Novo Nordisk and other European firms in pharmaceuticals, energy, finance, and the public sector. All share a common trait: they operate bespoke models and care deeply about where their data lives.

"It's not about large scales and huge numbers of GPUs," Carlsten said. "They're more about agility of these clusters, and more about having control of the infrastructure stack."

She expects to have compute clusters deployed for several customers by year's end. The target customers need hundreds to thousands of chips, not the massive orders making headlines elsewhere. General Compute, an inference cloud startup, announced a $300 billion chip order when it came out of stealth last month. Carlsten says she doesn't need commitments like that.

Who else operates in this space?

Smartbird won't be alone. Hewlett Packard offers single-tenant managed AI compute services. Equinix, the data center giant, does too. Both have established customer relationships and operational infrastructure. Carlsten's counter: she's not competing with cloud providers at all. Her real competition is internal company projects. Many enterprises are still just piloting AI tools. The market for managed, sovereign AI infrastructure is nascent.

Smartbird also won't compete on price. Cloud services optimize chip usage around the clock to offer the cheapest compute possible. Carlsten believes companies with specialized workflows can work more efficiently with their own servers, even if per-unit costs are higher. It's a bet on control over cost.

Is this a meme stock play or a real business?

When Allbirds announced its pivot in April, comparisons to GameStop were immediate. The pattern looked familiar: take a troubled public company, attach it to the hottest trend, watch retail investors pile in. Allbirds had fallen from a $4 billion IPO valuation in November 2021 to a stock price under $1. The AI rebrand sent shares upward.

Carlsten insists the transition was deliberate. "It wasn't, 'Let's just do AI, because it's AI, and it's hot,'" she said. "It was really about, do we have a chance to build a business over time that is going to find this niche in the market and be able to grow over time?"

Her background lends some credibility to that claim. AWS experience. An engineering PhD. Leadership at a European compute company serving exactly the customer type Smartbird is targeting. The question is whether a niche infrastructure play can deliver the growth public market investors expect. Single-tenant compute services are a real business. They're not necessarily a high-growth one.

What happened to Allbirds' sustainability mission?

One casualty of the pivot: Allbirds' public benefit corporation status. The company had structured itself as a PBC to enshrine sustainability commitments central to its shoe business pitch. PBC charters are supposed to highlight non-financial promises. OpenAI, for example, operates as a PBC focused on AI safety.

Smartbird dropped the PBC structure entirely. It's a reminder that these designations are hardly ironclad. When the business model changes, the corporate charter follows. Carlsten noted that Smartbird's board made a long-term commitment to execute against her AI strategy, but the specifics of that commitment weren't detailed.

What comes next for Smartbird?

Carlsten's immediate priority is building a leadership team. She's looking for someone to lead infrastructure operations. Then comes an office, presumably somewhere in Europe given her Amsterdam location and DCAI background. The company needs to move from PowerPoint to deployed clusters within months.

Demand for AI infrastructure remains intense, driving up stock prices for chipmakers, cloud providers, and energy companies. Investors have even warmed to orbital data centers. Whether that demand translates into growth for a niche, sovereignty-focused provider is the $143 million question. Carlsten has the capital and the credentials. Now she needs to hire a company.

Frequently Asked Questions

What happened to Allbirds shoes?

Allbirds sold its shoe business for $43 million and rebranded as Smartbird, an AI infrastructure company. The shoe business officially closed on June 18, 2026.

Who is Nadia Carlsten?

Nadia Carlsten is the new CEO of Smartbird. She's a former AWS executive with an engineering PhD who most recently led DCAI, a European compute company.

What does Smartbird do?

Smartbird plans to provide managed AI infrastructure for enterprises that need direct control over their servers, typically for data sovereignty or regulatory reasons. It targets industries like pharmaceuticals, energy, finance, and the public sector.

How much did Smartbird raise?

Smartbird raised $100 million from the stock market after selling the Allbirds shoe business for $43 million, giving the company $143 million in total capital.

Is Smartbird competing with AWS or Google Cloud?

No. Carlsten says Smartbird's real competition is internal company projects, not hyperscalers. The company targets enterprises wanting control over AI infrastructure rather than public cloud scalability.

Source: TechCrunch / Tim Fernholz